yelling at God

"Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." 

Aristotle 

I was scrolling through my FB page yesterday morning enjoying an easy Sunday morning when I stumbled upon an unexpected FB post that caught my idling mind and sent it off on a tangent. The post is below:
Are you suffering or want to know where God is at during hardships? Consider this...
Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. James 1:2-4

The juxtaposition of the question that asks if you are suffering and want to know where God is at during hardships and the Bible passage in the Book of James irked me, mainly because it sounds really disconnected from the reality of experiencing intense pain.

I then ended up listening to a great pastor speaking on the same passage at Church last night. He had the forethought to mention that James was dealing with one particular way of looking at suffering and the subject is complex and often mysterious. As is true for many of the better sermons I listen to, this sermon led my mind down a pathway of contemplating the topic more deeply, which led to pondering what I feel are the three types of suffering and their root causes as ascribed within Christianity's Sacred Texts. I ended up with these three Books on suffering.

• James' suffering is caused by a dislocated Self. This suffering is about perfecting us, that we might be closer to the original God intended us to be. 
• Job's suffering is caused by a disruptive Satan. This suffering is about proving that we are better than the disdainful defamation offered by our nemesis. 
• The Psalmists' suffering is caused by a deadly Sin. This suffering is about the endemic brokenness of the world we live in. It is unavoidable and has nothing to do specifically with us, or our nemesis. 

• James encourages us to take a reflective view to the suffering caused by our own distorted view of ourselves and the things around us, for this suffering is designed to mature us into a more accurate understanding of who we are and how we ought to interact with the things in our life. 
• Job encourages us to sit silently and endure the suffering caused by our Nemesis, knowing that our God will rectify it in due time. 
• The Psalmists' encourage us to yell at God, pouring out our agony at the injustice of having to suffer in a broken world. There is no maturing of the Self, nor the dismaying of the Satanic, there is only the meaningless suffering that the entire world experiences because things are still broken. 

My annoyance with most of Christianity's discourse on the topic of Suffering is that we tend to major on James, minor on Job and try to hurriedly explain away the massive amount of Psalmist text that is yelling at God in agony.
Below is how I react to suffering...

1.  I'll take the suffering that is due to my inaccurate understanding of myself, and count it all joy to be transformed through it. 
2.  I'll sit silently and endure the suffering that comes from satanic interference in my life. 
3.  But when the suffering is due solely to the fact the world I live in is still broken then I'm going to yell and moan to my God about the pure agony of meaningless suffering. For there is no safer source for me to vent my rage than my Creator. There is no better person to pour out my complaint to, than to my Heavenly friend. Finally, there is no better point to meaningless suffering than the agonized sharing of that suffering with those I count as intimates. 

In my experience much of the really agonizing types of suffering tend to be mainly from a broken world, then a mad nemesis and our own distorted self take up an equal minor portion between them. I've found the last two tend to offer some evidence of a malignant being behind the suffering. The last is just a mindless malady that was unfortunately something I walked in front of....

I'll leave you with the indubitable Mr. Blake....

"I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."

William Blake